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    Tartarin of Tarascon
    Tartarin of Tarascon
    Tartarin of Tarascon
    Ebook114 pages1 hour

    Tartarin of Tarascon

    By Alphonse Daudet

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    'Tartarin of Tarascon' is a novel written by the French author Alphonse Daudet. The story is set in the Provençal town of Tarascon, whose citizens are so enthusiastic about hunting that no game lives anywhere near it, and its inhabitants resort to telling hunting stories and throwing their own caps in the air to shoot at them. Tartarin, a plump middle-aged man, is the chief "cap-hunter", but following his enthusiastic reaction to seeing an Atlas lion in a traveling menagerie, the over-imaginative town understands him to be planning a hunting expedition to Algeria.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGood Press
    Release dateNov 27, 2019
    ISBN4057664614025
    Author

    Alphonse Daudet

    Alphonse Daudet (1840-1897) novelist, playwright, journalist is mainly remembered for the depiction of Provence in Lettres De Mon Moulin and his novel of amour fou, Sappho. He suffered from syphilis for the last 12 years of his life, recorded in La Doulou which has been translated into English by Julian Barnes as The Land of Pain.

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      Book preview

      Tartarin of Tarascon - Alphonse Daudet

      Alphonse Daudet

      Tartarin of Tarascon

      Published by Good Press, 2022

      goodpress@okpublishing.info

      EAN 4057664614025

      Table of Contents

      EPISODE THE FIRST, IN TARASCON

      EPISODE THE SECOND, AMONG THE TURKS

      EPISODE THE THIRD, AMONG THE LIONS

      APPENDIX

      Obituary of Alphonse Daudet.

      EPISODE THE FIRST, IN TARASCON

      Table of Contents

      I. The Garden Round the Giant Trees.

      MY first visit to Tartarin of Tarascon has remained a never-to-be-forgotten date in my life; although quite ten or a dozen years ago, I remember it better than yesterday.

      At that time the intrepid Tartarin lived in the third house on the left as the town begins, on the Avignon road. A pretty little villa in the local style, with a front garden and a balcony behind, the walls glaringly white and the venetians very green; and always about the doorsteps a brood of little Savoyard shoe-blackguards playing hopscotch, or dozing in the broad sunshine with their heads pillowed on their boxes.

      Outwardly the dwelling had no remarkable features, and none would ever believe it the abode of a hero; but when you stepped inside, ye gods and little fishes! what a change! From turret to foundation-stone—I mean, from cellar to garret,—the whole building wore a heroic front; even so the garden!

      O that garden of Tartarin’s! there’s not its match in Europe! Not a native tree was there—not one flower of France; nothing hut exotic plants, gum-trees, gourds, cotton-woods, cocoa and cacao, mangoes, bananas, palms, a baobab, nopals, cacti, Barbary figs—well, you would believe yourself in the very midst of Central Africa, ten thousand leagues away. It is but fair to say that these were none of full growth; indeed, the cocoa-palms were no bigger than beet root and the baobab (arbos gigantea—giant tree, you know) was easily enough circumscribed by a window-pot; but, notwithstanding this, it was rather a sensation for Tarascon, and the townsfolk who were admitted on Sundays to the honour of contemplating Tartarin’s baobab, went home chokeful of admiration.

      Try to conceive my own emotion, which I was bound to feel on that day of days when I crossed through this marvellous garden, and that was capped when I was ushered into the hero’s sanctum.

      His study, one of the lions—I should say, lions’ dens—of the town, was at the end of the garden, its glass door opening right on to the baobab.

      You are to picture a capacious apartment adorned with firearms and steel blades from top to bottom: all the weapons of all the countries in the wide world—carbines, rifles, blunderbusses, Corsican, Catalan, and dagger knives, Malay kreeses, revolvers with spring-bayonets, Carib and flint arrows, knuckle-dusters, life-preservers, Hottentot clubs, Mexican lassoes—now, can you expect me to name the rest? Upon the whole fell a fierce sunlight, which made the blades and the brass butt-plate of the muskets gleam as if all the more to set your flesh creeping. Still, the beholder was soothed a little by the tame air of order and tidiness reigning over the arsenal. Everything was in place, brushed, dusted, labelled, as in a museum; from point to point the eye descried some obliging little card reading:

      ————————————————————-

      I Poisoned Arrows! I

      I Do Not Touch! I

      ————————————————————-

      Or,

      ————————————————————-

      I Loaded! I

      I Take care, please! I

      ————————————————————-

      If it had not been for these cautions I never should have dared venture in.

      In the middle of the room was an occasional table, on which stood a decanter of rum, a siphon of soda-water, a Turkish tobacco-pouch, Captain Cook’s Voyages, the Indian tales of Fenimore Cooper and Gustave Aimard, stories of hunting the bear, eagle, elephant, and so on. Lastly, beside the table sat a man of between forty and forty-five, short, stout, thick-set, ruddy, with flaming eyes and a strong stubbly beard; he wore flannel tights, and was in his shirt sleeves; one hand held a book, and the other brandished a very large pipe with an iron bowl-cap. Whilst reading heaven only knows what startling adventure of scalp-hunters, he pouted out his lower lip in a terrifying way, which gave the honest phiz of the man living placidly on his means the same impression of kindly ferocity which abounded throughout the house.

      This man was Tartarin himself—the Tartarin of Tarascon, the great, dreadnought, incomparable Tartarin of Tarascon.

      II. A general glance bestowed upon the good town of Tarascon, and a particular one on the cap-poppers.

      AT the time I am telling of, Tartarin of Tarascon had not become the present-day Tartarin, the great one so popular in the whole South of France: but yet he was even then the cock of the walk at Tarascon.

      Let us show whence arose this sovereignty.

      In the first place you must know that everybody is shooting mad in these parts, from the greatest to the least. The chase is the local craze, and so it has ever been since the mythological times when the Tarasque, as the county dragon was called, flourished himself and his tail in the town marshes, and entertained shooting parties got up against him. So you see the passion has lasted a goodish bit.

      It follows that, every Sunday morning, Tarascon flies to arms, lets loose the dogs of the hunt, and rushes out of its walls, with game-bag slung and fowling-piece on the shoulder, together with a hurly-burly of hounds, cracking of whips, and blowing of whistles and hunting-horns. It’s splendid to see! Unfortunately, there’s a lack of game, an absolute dearth.

      Stupid as the brute creation is, you can readily understand that, in time, it learnt some distrust.

      For five leagues around about Tarascon, forms, lairs, and burrows are empty, and nesting-places abandoned. You’ll not find a single quail or blackbird, one little leveret, or the tiniest tit. And yet the pretty hillocks are mightily tempting, sweet smelling as they are of myrtle, lavender, and rosemary; and the fine muscatels plumped out with sweetness even unto bursting, as they spread along the banks of the Rhone, are deucedly tempting too. True, true; but Tarascon lies behind all this, and Tarascon is down in the black books of the world of fur and feather. The very birds of passage have ticked it off on their guide-books, and when the wild ducks, coming down towards the Camargue in long triangles, spy the town steeples from afar, the outermost flyers squawk out loudly:

      Look out! there’s Tarascon! give Tarascon the go-by, duckies!

      And the flocks take a swerve.

      In short, as far as game goes, there’s not a specimen left in the land save one old rogue of a hare, escaped by miracle from the massacres, who is stubbornly determined to stick to it all his life! He is very well known at Tarascon, and a name has been given him. Rapid is what they call him. It is known that he has his form on M. Bompard’s grounds—which, by the way, has doubled, ay, tripled, the value of the property—but nobody has yet managed to lay him low. At present, only two or three inveterate fellows worry themselves about him. The rest have given him up as a bad job, and old Rapid has long ago passed into the legendary world, although your Tarasconer is very slightly superstitious naturally, and would eat cock-robins on toast, or the swallow, which is Our Lady’s own bird, for that matter, if he could find any.

      But that won’t do! you will say. Inasmuch as game is so scarce, what can the sportsmen do every Sunday?

      What can they do?

      Why, goodness gracious! they go out into the real country two or three leagues from town. They gather in knots of five or six, recline tranquilly in the shade of some well, old wall, or olive tree, extract from their game-bags a good-sized piece of boiled beef, raw onions, a sausage, and anchovies, and commence a next to endless snack, washed down with one of those nice Rhone wines, which sets a toper laughing and singing. After that, when thoroughly braced up, they rise, whistle the dogs to heel, set the guns on half cock, and go on the shoot—another way of saying that every man plucks off his cap, shies it up with all his might, and pops it on the fly with No. 5, 6, or 2 shot, according to what he is loaded for.

      The man who lodges most shot in his cap is hailed as king of

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